encounters with mystery, politics and sex

Images

OK… a few thoughts. Maybe it’s the new wonderful artwork by Mike for MOTO’s header, maybe it’s the season, maybe it’s something else, but I have been thinking a lot about images recently. In the GD and magic we use images extensively to connect us with the divine beings and powers – so really I have been thinking more about imagery.

Though I am likely to invoke the wrath of a few anti-Christian nutters out there, it is quite clear that the sources for modern western magic developed within the Christian milieu. The background and backbone of many modern traditions, Rosicrucianism was started by heterodox Christians and is replete with Christian imagery and mysteries. This is a different thing to saying modern western magic is Christian.

One of the features that distinguishes Christianity from its main parent, Judaism is its use of religious imagery. Judaic (and Islamic) aversion to representations of divinity and divine presences, technically aniconism, is absent in most (modern) Christian traditions. This difference is often explained in terms of the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation, the ultimate Godhead taking physical form, therefore the physical icon being a fit and holy representation and method to connect with Christ as the One.

Magic with its heterodox Christian, Hermetic and Pagan inspirations often uses images with gay abandon and nary a thought for the spiritual principles behind aniconism. The main applicable principle is that any representation of the divine, the One Thing, must be incomplete and therefore inaccurate and misleading, even offensive. The Hermetic, Christian and pagan approach is different, viewing the images as links to the mystery. Just as a Godform is both limiting the unknowable One and a method of connecting to the One, so too are representations of the Gods and divine beings. This explains the use of magical images associated with Sephiroth in Hermetic Qabalah, something that marks its break from traditional Jewish Kabbalah.

All well and good. However, one of the other concerns of aniconism is that any image, any representation must by necessity involve the human imagination, effort and mind. Since these are limited, the representations are limited and therefore can limit the observers of these images. A specific example is this image of ‘the Horned Lord’.

Love the modern beard.

Now the deity in question has only been around a couple of hundred years at best, being a modern western expression of an eternal reality and presence. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, it is clear that this image is temporal in nature, extolling those virtues of masculinity – rugged good looks, a six pack abdomen and sculpted muscles – found in those stereotypes of ideal manhood beloved of Hollywood and men’s magazines. There is no doubt he’s well hung too.

Look also at these images of Isis and other divine or spiritual female beings. They represent modern sexual and physical fantasies of the ideal woman, thin waisted, size 8 with non-saggy tits, as much as they do the Goddess.

Isis with modern sexy underwear

Diana – after Weight Watchers?

A Cat Goddess, apparently (apologies to Bastet)

When we worship and commune with eternal mysteries and presences via temporal images that are pretty much (apart from the horns and embellishments) the same as we see in sexualised magazines, I think there may be problems. This is not because sex is a problem, not because physical beauty is a problem, or even the abs. It is because we mix the realms – being conditioned to respond in a certain way to sexualised and perfect images of the human body, we will respond in the same way when we worship via these images.

Now we can argue it is fine to be sexually aroused and interested during our worship, and that is all right. However, the point is that the sexual impetus is instigated from culturally and temporally conditioned factors, not from a personal and inner connection with the divine. There is a big difference; one locks us into a limited time-space approach to the divine, and the other allows the Gods to inform and inspire our reactions. We should remember that what we see as beautiful and sexy today was not so throughout all history. Ancient Greek depictions of penises were often small because a large penis was considered a sign of barbarianism and a small penis a sign of civility. Skinny women were not considered sexy only a hundred years ago.

I am not only saying that divine images date themselves, but that if we are not careful we make the gods in our own image. Of course, as I mentioned with the Horned Lord, we as a culture do that, and have always done that. However, to use images, attributes and ideas associates with sexual attraction and beauty we are risking making the Gods simply larger, divine images of our pin-up models. There is a (now old) joke that it is telling that Wiccans refer to their deities by the same title they give to their priesthood, Lord and Lady. This is not having a go at Wiccans, simply pointing out how we need to consider our images of the divine very carefully.

The Hebrew word translated as ‘holy’, QDSh or Qodosh has roots that mean to ‘keep separate’, ‘apart’, to ‘make holy’. This is a principle I personally use in my practice. Any images of the divine are separate from those I see in my daily life. The words I use for Christ are Hebrew and Aramaic, to avoid linkage with jokes and blasphemy about ‘Jesus’. This Qodosh principle is used extensively in western magic and modern Neo-paganism, apart from it seems our images of the divine. Why do we keep our tools, robes and talismans separate from the herd, but not our images? Now, I know there are some traditions that use ‘what’s at hand’, and seeing a traditional cunning man literally pick up what’s in the kitchen and work the deepest magic, I understand this. But this is a completely different approach from magic and modern paganism.

Representing the Image

The images we have of divinity naturally affect how we imitate, represent and worship divinity. Traditional religious dress is almost uniformly, regardless of culture and time, a uniform itself. Tibetan monks wear the same robes as other monks. Christian priests wear the same outfit as others of their sect and/or order. Nuns all looked, once upon a time, a little like penguins. The idea of course is to transmute and translate individuality towards a universal transcendent reality, be that God or enlightenment. This is not to say the robes and clothes themselves do not have meaning and symbolism, they most certainly do, only that the meaning is determined by the collective, not the individual.

Again, this is something that many modern Neo-pagans and some magicians have moved away from. Individual robes are often well, just that – individual. Heck, I once wore a paisley satin robe to a Wiccan conference (don’t ask why) :) This expression of individualism is probably very good … I think… in some ways. However, I do worry about it, as the cult of the individual in the west has all sorts of nasty side effects. I am sure we can surrender and transmute our individual nature wearing individually chosen togs, but if they are chosen for lower self reasons, I think we hamper ourselves.

I once participated in wonderful weekend workshop with the Druid Priestess Emma Restall-Orr. I loved the workshop and learned a lot. During the weekend she referred more than once to how she would start her discussions on paganism, with groups like schoolchildren, by writing the question ‘do you think religion should be sexy?’ on the blackboard. Naturally this would get the audience’s attention and deliver a winning blow to any vicar she was competing against. All very good, but when she arrived on the last night for the main ritual she was dressed in robes clearly chosen for their glamour and sex appeal. She walked past, swirling her skirts/robes in a very powerful gesture. My Druid friend, a straight man, was obviously effected and later said for him this display meant ‘the Priestess had arrived’. So, a good thing, I guess … but I still wonder if a mature Dion Fortune, the Priestess of the 20th century, had ambled by, if the same affect would occur. And on that note, take a look at two other Priestesses whose power could roast chestnuts…

DAN and CCT – Priestesses and more

It seems in some way that where Neo-Paganism has gone, the Church may be following. How else do we explain this report on the latest clerical fashions for the Church of England, allowing Vicars to personalise at will? :). It all seems like a bit of window dressing to me, just like making the pulpits ready to dock the Vicar’s iPad. Give me an old fashioned cassock and King James Bible any day :) Thanks for listening…

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"We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured." ~Martin Luther-King.

“A religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism” ~

"The pseudo-occultism of the present day, with its dubious psychism, wild theorizing, and evidence that cannot stand up to the most cursory examination, is but the detritus which accumulates around the base of the Mount of Vision. All such worthless rubbish is not worth the power and shot of argument; in order to form a just estimate of the Sacred Science we must study originals, and try to penetrate the minds of the great mystics… whose works bear evidence of first-hand knowledge of the supersensible worlds."Dion Fortune.

How does my spiritual practice and daily life serve the earth?
How does my spiritual practice and daily life affect the poorest third of humanity?
How will my spiritual practice and daily life affect the generations to come in the future?
~ Starhawk

"It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity."
B.K.S. Iyengar

“For most of us, however, we only think seriously of food or sex or money when it becomes a problem, which is to say when we feel we are not getting our share. When we find ourselves in that situation then I regret to say that meditational visualisations are really not the best way to remedy the lack. … We are here in a physical condition in a physical world and while in that state we have to abide by the laws appropriate to it.”
~ Gareth Knight

"The biblical texts have been strained out through a Greek/Latin mindset, which is very surface and static. I sometimes think it would have actually have been better if Western culture had based so called "Western religion" on Greek philosophy, rather than middle-eastern, because then at least you'd have all one thing. It would be eternally consistent. But what we have now is sort of half of each. And you're left with a basically schizophrenic tradition." ~ Neil Douglas-Klotz

"There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too."~ Karen Armstrong.

"if a man like the Dalai Lama, who had lost an entire country and countless friends, could still lose himself in gales of giggles, surely there was hope for the rest of us."~ Rachel Louise Snyder.

"We have to “kill” ourselves, often in the most gruesome manner possible, the become more than the bloke produced by the collision of History, Accident and Genetics on the day we were born."~ Robert Anton Wilson.

"Can a horse tell you what it means to be human? How can a horse get beyond the boundaries of being a horse and say what it means to be human? Why do we think a human being can say what it means to be God? And yet we’ve done that; we’ve done that and we said that we’ve got it so right that if you don’t believe it we’ll burn you at the stake. That’s a very strange idea." ~John Shelby Spong.

How does my spiritual practice and daily life serve the earth?
How does my spiritual practice and daily life affect the poorest third of humanity?
How will my spiritual practice and daily life affect the generations to come in the future?
~ Starhawk

“For most of us, however, we only think seriously of food or sex or money when it becomes a problem, which is to say when we feel we are not getting our share. When we find ourselves in that situation then I regret to say that meditational visualisations are really not the best way to remedy the lack. … We are here in a physical condition in a physical world and while in that state we have to abide by the laws appropriate to it.”
~ Gareth Knight

"It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity."
B.K.S. Iyengar

"The biblical texts have been strained out through a Greek/Latin mindset, which is very surface and static. I sometimes think it would have actually have been better if Western culture had based so called "Western religion" on Greek philosophy, rather than middle-eastern, because then at least you'd have all one thing. It would be eternally consistent. But what we have now is sort of half of each. And you're left with a basically schizophrenic tradition." ~ Neil Douglas-Klotz